by Kirby Larson
The doll looked like a princess, in a bright silk gown the color of wild persimmons, sprayed with blue flowers. Her long dark hair was sleek and smooth where Willie Mae’s was wavy. Her lips were painted red, like those magazine ladies. Two hands like calla lilies rested in graceful crescents at her sides. Everything about her was exotic and fine. Willie Mae had never been one for dollies, but this one seemed to speak to her with those mysterious dark eyes. Willie Mae longed to brush the silk gown, run her fingers along the ribs of the faded paper parasol.
Finally, the child has seen me. She’s a scruffy-looking one. Thin, too. She holds her own with the old lady, doesn’t back down. I have enjoyed listening to her read, but on the underside of her voice I hear the longing to tell her own stories. There’s something else I hear, something troubling. It puts me in mind of peony blossoms, how they fade quickly when cut for the vase. Or the ragged edges of Master Tatsuhiko’s words when he spoke of his little daughter.
I wish Brigitte were here. She would help me understand this puzzle.
That face held Willie Mae’s gaze. The parted lips made it look as if the doll was on the verge of saying something. And not just any something, like “How do you do?” or “Fine weather we’re having.” This doll, Willie Mae knew, would have stories to tell—of her faraway land and the people who lived there. Stories that would put Willie Mae’s scribblings to shame.
Willie Mae glanced over at the old lady, whose head drooped toward her chest. Thinking her asleep emboldened Willie Mae to reach out and stroke the doll’s shiny hair.
How foolish she is to compare my stories with hers. The wren and the nightingale sound nothing alike, but think how dull the world would be without the songs of both birds. Perhaps it is because she is a child that she does not comprehend this.
“That’s real hair, you know.”
Willie Mae dropped her hand to her side. “I didn’t mean no harm.”
Mrs. Weldon pushed herself up out of her lady’s chair and hobbled close enough that Willie Mae could smell her lily of the valley toilet water. “Real hair.”
The apple-core face wrinkled into a frown. Mrs. Weldon tottered even closer and smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from the doll’s dress. “Nonsense, at my age, buying a doll.” She plucked a lacy handkerchief from her dress’s sleeve and poked at her nose. “I went to that auction for a megalodon tooth. Fine specimen. Museum quality.” She finished with her nose and tucked the handkerchief back into her sleeve. “Lord knows what came over me, but when they put this doll up on the block, she practically told me to bid. I swan. Something in those eyes of hers spoke to me.” Her own eyes were drawn to the doll’s then, just as Willie Mae’s had been. Then she shook herself, as if surprised at what she’d said. “Of course, I know a doll couldn’t tell me to do anything. It’s not possible.” She grabbed Willie Mae’s arm and held on like a bulldog. “You won’t prattle about this to my daughter?”
Willie Mae drew a cross over her heart. “I promise.” The pressure on her arm lessened. “Those eyes pulled me right in, too. As if she was trying to tell me something.” Willie Mae laughed. “Though, if she could talk, don’t you think her stories would be something to hear? She could tell us how folks in Japan do things, what they like to eat and such.”
Mrs. Weldon appraised the girl. So, she had an imagination, a desire to learn. She recalled another child like that, from long ago.
“You wear an old lady out with such ideas. You want me to have a stroke?” Mrs. Weldon took an exaggerated breath. “Help me back to my chair.”
Willie Mae offered her arm and assisted Mrs. Weldon across the room. Once she was seated, Mrs. Weldon snapped her fingers for Willie Mae to pour her a glass of water, which she did.
Seated and refreshed, Mrs. Weldon resumed the story about the auction, ending with “So in addition to a bit of a dinosaur, I came home with a bit of the Orient. But”—she set her water glass down with a clink—“I don’t feel I did too badly in the bargain.”
She was quiet for so long, Willie Mae thought she’d nodded off to sleep again. Then Mrs. Weldon snapped, “She’s got a name, you know. Miss Kanagawa.”
“Miss Ka-na-ga-wa.” Willie Mae tried it out. “That’s a tongue tangler, for certain.”
Mrs. Weldon laughed, right out loud. It was a sharp sound, like rocks clacking against one another when Cut Shin Creek was on the rise. “It surely is. A tongue tangler.” She settled herself. “And a mind tangler, too. Heaven knows why I brought her home. But I find there’s a reason for most happenings, even those that seem positively mysterious. What do you think?” She lifted the lid of the cut-glass candy dish next to her chair and selected a chocolate.
Willie Mae pondered a moment. “Preacher says Pap was taken to spare him further suffering here on earth. But Ma said what about our suffering, without a pap?” The sweet smell of chocolate distracted her from the conversation. She swallowed back the saliva in her mouth. “I admire Preacher, yes I do, but Ma seems to have a point.”
Mrs. Weldon popped the chocolate into her mouth and chewed prodigiously. Willie Mae’s jaws moved in time. The cut-glass lid clinked open again. Willie Mae fancied nibbling off one corner of such a candy. She imagined sweet chocolate warming her mouth. Another nibble and she would taste coconut. She was sure of that.
Mrs. Weldon ate another chocolate. All in one big bite. “I see your point. Your ma’s point, that is.” With her little finger, she rearranged something in her back teeth and smacked. “Well taken. Well taken.” She swallowed, sniffed, then waved her hand. “Do you want to wear an old lady out? Leave me be, won’t you?”
Willie Mae stumbled through a curtsy to Mrs. Weldon and stole a last look at Miss Kanagawa.
Tell your own stories.
Willie Mae waved at the air by the side of her head. A mosquito or gnat must’ve gotten inside—what else could be teasing at her ear? That buzzing sounded almost like real words. But Mrs. Weldon’s eyes were already shuttered up for her afternoon nap. Willie Mae’s mind must be playing tricks on her.
She suddenly had the urge to get upstairs to her room and write something. Maybe even a poem about being able to munch on chocolates whenever you pleased. Of course, if Willie Mae had such a cut-glass dish full of sweets, she’d share.
This was only woolgathering, nothing more. There would be no sweets in the tote at the end of her month. Her hard-earned dollars would go toward a ham, some coffee, and soup beans. If there was something to jingle left over, it would go toward a packet of sugar for Ma’s coffee. There was no room for such nonsense as store-bought chocolates in her future.
Dear Theo,
Mrs. Trent gave me a stamp so I could write you. Everyone here treats me real fine, even Mrs. Weldon, in her own way. She reminds me of that old hound of Pap’s. Remember Copper? How he’d growl at us kids even when we were bringing him his supper? He never did more than growl, but growl he must. That’s kind of like Mrs. Weldon. I imagine I’d be a bit porcupiney myself, were I confined to my bedroom after having traveled the world around.
Her room is such a glorious hodgepodge of wonders, it would take weeks to study it all. That’s why I didn’t even lay eyes on the Japanese doll until today. She is something, Theo, dressed so fine and with a face that makes her look most real. I swear that some midnight she might up and speak, like the animals did in that story you used to tell me. She has inspired me to write a poem. If I get it into fair enough shape, I will copy it out in my best hand and send it to you.
Your loving sister,
Willie Mae
As she lay in bed that night, Willie Mae fought a puzzling achiness in her head and chest. She did miss Ma and Marvel and even baby Franklin, but this was something different. More in her body than in her heart. She tossed and turned, trying to find some ease. Comfort came finally when she imagined a tiny hand, soft and white as a lily, stroking her cheek until the stars, and then sleep, took over the night.
Miz Junkins stopped by the next morning. “I can’t stay; I�
�ve got a long route today. But I wanted to see how things were going.”
“We are getting along real good,” Willie Mae said. “And I’m reading her Tom Sawyer!”
Miz Junkins exchanged a glance with Olive, who was standing behind Willie Mae in the doorway.
“You’d never believe it, Sarah.” Olive wiped her hands on a dish towel. “This girl’s like tonic for that old—I mean, for Mrs. Weldon.”
They chatted a few more minutes and then Miz Junkins went on her way.
“You scarcely touched your biscuits,” said Olive, frowning over Willie Mae’s breakfast plate.
“I’ll save them for dinner.” Willie Mae didn’t have much appetite. Maybe she was just that eager to run up to Mrs. Weldon’s room. The old lady’s tongue was as sharp as Ma’s sewing shears, but her stories! She had lived. She had traveled. Willie Mae would have borne heaps of words sharp as needles in order to listen to Mrs. Weldon’s yarns. She’d ridden a camel in Egypt and hunted pheasants with a duke in Austria.
“After my husband passed, I made up my mind not to let one moment go by without living life to the fullest,” she’d told Willie Mae. The day she described her trip to Peru, Willie Mae had a headache herself thinking about fighting for a good breath in those high, high mountains with their thin, thin air.
Miz Junkins stopped by for a real visit one afternoon during Willie Mae’s third week. “You feeling all right?” she asked. “You look a little peaked.”
Willie Mae shook off the question. “I dreamt last night about pyramids. Did you know Mrs. Weldon’s been to Egypt? And Spain? And that she dug for fossils in Peru?”
Miz Junkins poured a cup of tea from the pot Olive had prepared. “I had heard some such.” She added a teaspoon of sugar and took a sip, satisfied now that a bit of pink had sprung into Willie Mae’s cheeks. “How’d Tom Sawyer make out?”
“Oh, it was the best book I ever read!” Willie Mae dunked an icebox cookie into her own teacup. “That is, until we started reading about Huck Finn.” She bit off the soggy sliver of cookie and swallowed. It scraped the entire way down her gizzard. Must’ve taken too big a bite. She swallowed again. “Miz Weldon has more books in that room of hers than a hound dog’s got fleas.”
Miz Junkins laughed. “Well, our library could surely use some of those fleas.”
Willie Mae didn’t hold Miz Junkins to fault for her comment. She’d learned from Olive that the liveliest topic in town was what would happen with all of Mrs. Weldon’s impressive possessions after she passed.
The gossip held that Mrs. Weldon planned to leave her collections—including her books—to the Natural History Museum, in Lexington. What was left of her husband’s money would be divided between her daughter and the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Willie Mae didn’t like to think about such, even though she knew everyone died sometime. Still, she did lie awake a night or two wondering about Miss Kanagawa. The fossils and shells and the like at the Natural History Museum would hardly be suitable company for her. Miss Kanagawa would prefer to be with people, plain and simple. Why, any doll would. Willie Mae could tell by the way those dark eyes seemed to warm up, like embers after you blew on them, when she went to Mrs. Weldon’s room. Willie Mae took another sip of tea to soothe her throat. Where the doll would land after Mrs. Weldon was gone was something she’d never heard speculation about. She dunked her cookie again, determining to say her prayers this very night that it would be a long, long time until the doctor came up to the great door of this house, black bag in hand.
It wasn’t that the Good Lord didn’t heed Willie Mae’s prayers in general. It was this latest one He paid no nevermind to. That very night, the doctor pounded at the great front door. The house lights were all aglow as he stamped his feet on the Aubusson rug in the front hall. “Take me to the patient,” he said.
Though Olive answered his knock, it was Mrs. Trent who showed him up the stairs. He started right, toward Mrs. Weldon’s room, but Mrs. Trent stopped him. “That way,” she said, pointing to the stairs Olive was now climbing.
Mrs. Weldon opened her bedroom door, peering out. “I told you she’d bring the plague into this house. I told you she’d be trouble.” She leaned hard against her walking stick.
“I sincerely doubt it’s the plague,” Dr. Pemberton said evenly, easing his ample body around the bend in the landing. “The influenza’s more like it. Going round up in the hills. Most likely that’s what’s ailing her.”
“It’s a plague all the same.”
“Mrs. Weldon, why don’t you let me see to the little one and we’ll go from there?” Dr. Pemberton climbed the stairs and firmly shut the door between him and the old lady below. “Well, hello there, Willie Mae. How are you?”
He received no answer from the bed. Crossing the room in a manner completely unexpected for a man of his girth, he was at her side in an instant, one hand on her forehead, one on her wrist for her pulse. He took notice of Olive, in the corner, wringing a tea towel in her hands.
“This is no time for faint hearts,” he told her, proceeding to rattle off a list of instructions for the pale patient’s care. At the conclusion of his commands, he paused, brushing back the small girl’s unruly hair from her face. “These holler children don’t have much in reserve. But we will do our best.”
Olive flew into action to carry out the doctor’s orders. For the next few days, the household moved through its normal course, but always there was one ear cocked toward the tiny upstairs room.
“Why is my luncheon late again?” complained Mrs. Weldon on Tuesday.
“It has been ages since I’ve heard Huck Finn,” she grumbled on Friday.
“All this fuss over a small girl,” she clucked the Tuesday next. “What about me? I’m feeling quite faint.”
“Have an egg,” said Mrs. Trent, carrying in a breakfast tray. “It will bolster you up.” She set the tray on the small table in her mother’s room but didn’t stay to crack or peel the egg on it. “Oh, I think I hear her coughing.” She grabbed a pitcher of ice water and flew to the stairs.
“Well, I never.” Mrs. Weldon pushed the soft-boiled egg aside and ate three pieces of toast with butter and apricot jam. It was a breakfast that would probably send her into diabetic shock. Severe diabetic shock.
But she was still on her feet at noon. “Where’s my meal?” She rang for Olive.
“In a moment, ma’am.” Olive flew past her, up the stairs to the room of that girl, bearing a tray with bouillon and sugar toast.
“I am on my last legs!” Mrs. Weldon called after her. But there was no answer. “I suppose I must starve in my own home.” She pressed her right hand to her left breast. “Or die alone. All alone.” Feeling abandoned and forlorn, she moved around her room, touching this object and that, taking complete inventory.
Her hand came to rest on a small speckled stone on the windowsill. She recalled the morning that Willie Mae had named the Egg Stone and held it to her ear. “Yep,” she’d said. “I can hear some kind of rock baby in there, pecking its way out.” She’d laughed at her silliness. Thinking of that laughter brought a sad smile to Mrs. Weldon’s own lips. Even in the dreary days of December, her room had felt full of light and springtime. Ever since that girl had arrived.
She paused in front of Miss Kanagawa.
“Well, I suppose if you could speak, you’d be in a dither about her, like the rest of this household. Everything topsy-turvy.” She fussed with the knot in the doll’s obi. “In my day, children weren’t allowed to cause a fuss. Such demands for attention would be met with the business end of a switch.”
At that moment, she looked at the doll. Really looked at her, as she had the day of the auction.
This old woman needs my help or her heart will shrivel up completely like a dried plum. My sway over adults is limited, though she heard me when I encouraged her to bid at the auction. Something in those cautious eyes told me she was the one I should go with.
Thank goodness she heard
me then. But will she hear me now?
She was a child once, herself, was she not? Perhaps I need remind her of that child.
I sense a sickroom in her own past. And something else. Plums? No. Not plums. Another fruit.
Into Mrs. Weldon’s room from somewhere wafted the summertime fragrance of apricots. Not just any apricots, but the Moorparks that her mother had lovingly tended. She remembered being about the same age as that holler girl, carrying a brown transferware bowl full of them up to her mother’s sickroom when her father stopped her with news that sent the bowl shattering to the floor.
After her mother’s death, she followed her father’s lead and turned inward, determined to be sufficient unto herself. That attitude had stood her in good stead throughout her life. Until recently.
It seemed everyone thought her selfish, including her own daughter. She’d learned too late that friends needed cultivating, too, like her beloved mother’s apricot trees. Solitary in her room, she’d had nothing to do but take inventory of her increasing aches and pains, wondering if the next inhale would be her last. Of course, there hadn’t been much time for such since Willie Mae had come to stay.
She caught her breath after this particular thought. She found she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a headache or a neck ache or any sort of ache. For years, she’d felt like a neglected pocket watch tossed in a drawer. Since Willie Mae’s arrival, she’d felt properly wound up, in tune and ready to tick.
All because of an urchin from the holler. She glanced at the doll. “Her name’s Willie Mae,” she said. “I didn’t care for it at first, but it suits her. Sharp little thing, too. And not a bad reader. Reads almost as eloquently as I do.” She tapped her cheek with her forefinger. That was the ticket. Nothing like a read-aloud to send the punies flying. She herself knew that firsthand. Mrs. Weldon searched for the copy of Huckleberry Finn. Then she recalled she’d let the girl—let Willie Mae—take it to her room.